Rumi: Poems from the Divan-E Shams, PPB

By Jalal-Uddin Rumi
Tranlsated By Geoffrey Squires

Geoffrey Squires’ translations of Hafez, also published by Miami University Press, won the 2014 Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize awarded by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. This volume of translations of another of the major figures of Persian poetry brings the same combination of poetic skill and scholarly precision to the task. It traces the changing and sometimes challenging relationship between the scholarly Rumi and the unpredictable dervish Shams, who suddenly appeared in his life, and through it the deepening of Rumi’s experience of love and his insight into mysticism. We also get occasional glimpses of Rumi the man and a sense of the times in which he lived. There are detailed notes on the poems and a groundbreaking discussion of Text and Context.